Nothing like getting oneself to eat better than going through photos of yourself.
Winter…well MANY winters…of jobs which I sit most of the day in front of a computer and my hardwired DNA have not been kind. Time to start watching what I eat, so for lunch I present:
From top left we have spinach and veggies in a sesame vinaigrette, a rice ball with azuki beans and at the bottom fried fish. No it isn’t diet food, but rather well balanced for a weekday quickie lunch bought on the spur of the moment.
Great thing about Japan is that it really isn’t hard to eat healthy. I sometime shudder at the thought of how large I would be if I lived in the US all these years instead.
Old habits are hard to change. I never was good at writing letters and I am still not good at it…even in blog form.
Valentine’s Day is old news, I know, but I can’t let this year go by without saying thanks to my man. He bought me roses! Now, any American female is going “but that is not anything too special, it is Valentine’s Day. But you see, in Japan things are reversed.
Valentine’s Day in Japan has women buying gifts of chocolate for the men in their life…true love and those they just want to get in good graces with. There is the “honmei-choco” or true feelings chocolate and there is the “giri-choco” or indebted chocolate, usually given to male coworkers and bosses.
Unfair! you may say, but the men are then indebted to give back chocolate on White Day on March 14th. Celebrated in Japan and Korea, it was started by some ingenious Japanese marketing. If this return gift is for honmei-choco, then it better be way more expensive than the price of the chocolate given by the gal…otherwise the relationship could be in danger.
Personally, I never could get into the giri-choco thing, but dutifully go along with giving chocolate from the group of women at work (we’re usually outnumbered 3 to 1 so it can get hard on the pocketbook). And so I have always tried to instill in our marriage the western idea of Valentine’s Day, preferably centered around the man giving the gift.
And this year without having to give too many hints about romance and what-not, he came through. Besides having a dozen stemmed red roses, he also had a whole box of rose buds which are now decorating our living room and bathroom. And he thought that up all by himself. I am so proud.
